Add an Anonymous Dislike Button to The Forums

[luckiestblock]

Personal Anecdote:
So I was perusing the forums and I discovered a very large Thread called Make Dueling Gear-Free. It has garnered a LOT of likes and replies and seems to show a nearly unanimous support. However one of the vocal dissenters (Flip) wrote about how he believed there was a very large number of people that in fact DID NOT support the idea but decided not to voice it for fear of being avalanched with negativity from those who do (you can read his post for context here). To be clear I do NOT endorse his post but I do think we should all acknowledge that there is a Non 0% chance he is right and that we should treat it as such, as a potential problem to be solved. As a solution to this problem (which if it did not happen at that post, certainly happened with others) I propose adding an anonymous dislike button.

Actual Suggestion:
My proposed dislike button would be similar to the like button in that you could see the number of people that have done the action on the post. How it would differ is that you can not see the specific players who have done the action. Instead of showing the usernames it would just show the number of players, for example "Three players have disliked this post" "Five players have disliked this post" etcetera. This is to prevent any harassment that can come from doing the action while still keeping the opinion public.

Thanks for reading and have a groovy day.

 

[Nyn]

This would be very helpful. As you said in the Make Dueling Gear-Free post, this would clear up some things. Then we can see the communities thoughts without (almost) a doubt and staff can see exactly what the majority of us want and go from there. This is as long as staff go along with out opinion on that matter.

 

[Aurora]

Hello luckiestblock,
Thank you for bringing forward your idea!
I will now discuss your suggestion with the other Poltergeists and we will inform you once a decision has been made.
Have a great day!

 

[may2070]

This would be very helpful, as it allows players to voice their opinions freely without fear of being hated on if they go against the majority. It also gives Poltergeists and staff members a more accurate view of the community's thoughts on the matter. However, there's also the poll option which allows anonymous voting already, so I'm not sure if they could be seen as redundant or not but I still think it should be added.

 

[nathan1e]

I am just going to go ahead and say that I dislike this idea. I get where you're coming from, I really do, as the current format of the forums does not allow people to anonymously voice a negative opinion and therefore the amount of likes given to any post is not really representative of how well an idea is received within the community.

However, after having a great deal of experience with forums like this one and smaller ones, I can safely say that I think such an anonymous dislike feature would be abused by trolls. I've seen people through the years that, for no reason whatsoever, would go and dislike a bunch of forum posts for pretty much no reason at all. This would normally be a completely harmless thing, however, in the way you're suggesting it, this would be a part of measuring the community's opinion. Troll actions such as the ones that I described would pretty much sabotage this measurement, and I think such a misshaped idea of the community's opinion is nowhere near what staff is looking for.

For example, before forum suggestions there was uservoice, and with uservoice came the uservoice discord channel where ideas would be posted and players would get the opportunity to like or dislike a certain idea. I won't mention names but I clearly remember specific individuals who would ALWAYS dislike uservoice suggestions, no matter what the suggestion was.

And even if this wasn't abused, which I highly doubt, but let's just assume this, how would one determine that this is not the case? If an idea is getting a massive amount of dislikes, how does the staff team determine if that is genuinely the community's opinion, or just a bunch of trolls?

TL;DR: I think the idea in itself is good, but just too sensitive for abuse.

 

[may2070]

And even if this wasn't abused, which I highly doubt, but let's just assume this, how would one determine that this is not the case? If an idea is getting a massive amount of dislikes, how does the staff team determine if that is genuinely the community's opinion, or just a bunch of trolls?

TL;DR: I think the idea in itself is good, but just too sensitive for abuse.

Not going to lie, I completely forgot about this. Tbf, the players that do look through the Feedback and Suggestions forums do take suggestions seriously, but that doesn't mean trolls can't appear too

I guess the only way to differentiate between trolls and legitimate opinions is to see if there's a common pattern with the dislikes each thread receives. Maybe Poltergeists should have the perms to see who dislikes a thread, and then they can go from there

There's also alternative options for a player to show their support or disagreement for a suggestion, such as replying to the thread. I feel like if a player truly disagrees with a suggestion, they would reply to the thread and voice their concern so that everyone else can understand if there's a flaw with the suggestion rather than stay silent about it. Of course, there will be instances where a player will just dislike a post and not bother backing up their opinion on it, so I guess there can't really be an accurate way to figure out the community's true stance on a suggestion, but the dislike button could still make things easier in that regard

 

[Aurora]

Greetings @luckiestblock,
As always thank you for submitting your idea on these forums! We really do appreciate player suggestions as we aim to improve and better the server where we can!
Unfortunately, after discussing your idea, we have decided to decline it because we believe voting should not be anonymous. As already stated, the possibility of people trolling is always present and even if we (the Poltergeists) could see who voted on the thread, it might not really help us realize the stance of the community on a subject, as we can't simply disregard a player opinion on the basis that we think they are trolling, as that would be unfair and we value every member's opinion highly. Anonymous voting also increases the chances of vote brigading, which is something we definitely want to avoid as we want the votes to remain genuine and fair. Vote brigading would also make it far more difficult to determine the community's position on a suggestion.
Furthermore, if votes are anonymous, we would not be able to contact the person to understand why they feel this way and gain insights and clarifications on their position and concerns. This would be quite inconvenient, as we would like to be able to contact people, if we have questions or just to see what the issue is and how we could resolve it.
We understand where you are coming from and your concerns are perfectly valid and understandable, but unfortunately the idea of an anonymous dislike button is not something we want to implement. We hope you can understand our reasoning for this!
Thanks again and have a wonderful day!

 

[luckiestblock]

Greetings @luckiestblock,
As always thank you for submitting your idea on these forums! We really do appreciate player suggestions as we aim to improve and better the server where we can!
Unfortunately, after discussing your idea, we have decided to decline it because we believe voting should not be anonymous. As already stated, the possibility of people trolling is always present and even if we (the Poltergeists) could see who voted on the thread, it might not really help us realize the stance of the community on a subject, as we can't simply disregard a player opinion on the basis that we think they are trolling, as that would be unfair and we value every member's opinion highly. Anonymous voting also increases the chances of vote brigading, which is something we definitely want to avoid as we want the votes to remain genuine and fair.
Furthermore, if votes are anonymous, we would not be able to contact the person to understand why they feel this way and gain insights and clarifications on their position and concerns. This would be quite inconvenient, as we would like to be able to contact, if we have questions or just to see what the issue is and how we could resolve it.
We understand where you are coming from and your concerns are perfectly valid and understandable, but unfortunately the idea of an anonymous dislike button is not something we want to implement. We hope you can understand our reasoning for this!
Thanks again and have a wonderful day!

Alright well thanks for looking into it for me <3

 

[Nyn]

Fair point, staff. But let me say one quick thing:

we believe voting should not be anonymous.

Some people want to share their opinion but not have people know who they are (be anonymous). I get your points but I think it's only right to provide SOME WAY to give anonymous feedback. You can not anonymously give feedback or ask questions anymore on the discord, as you are required to link you account. It doesn't necessarily matter what way you can give feedback anonymously, but I feel there should be some way. (Yes I know you can contact staff directly, maybe using a throw away discord account so they don't know who you are, but there is a chance they will ask you to tell them who you are)